Managing the “Matchless Wonders”
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Managing the “Matchless Wonders” A HISTORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENT IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, 1872–1965 Historic Resource Study, Volume III Park Administrative History, Part I By Kiki Leigh Rydell and Mary Shivers Culpin National Park Service Yellowstone Center for Resources Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming YCR-2006-03 Managing the “Matchless Wonders” A History of Administrative Development in Yellowstone National Park, 1872–1965 Historic Resource Study, Volume III Park Administrative History, Part I By Kiki Leigh Rydell and Mary Shivers Culpin National Park Service Yellowstone Center for Resources Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming YCR-2006-03 Design and layout: Virginia Warner Editor: Alice Wondrak Biel Content review: Lee Whittlesey and Elaine Hale Photos courtesy of Yellowstone National Park photo archives unless otherwise noted. Cover photo: Madison Museum, YELL #44321. Inside cover photo: Norris Boardwalk, YELL #41214. Photo research: Bridgette Case, Kiki Leigh Rydell, and Lee Whittlesey. Suggested citation: Rydell, Kiki Leigh, and Mary Shivers Culpin. 2006. Managing the “Matchless Wonders”: A History of Administrative Development in Yellowstone National Park, 1872–1965. National Park Service, Yellow- stone Center for Resources, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, YCR-2006-03. Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................v 1. “To Protect These Matchless Wonders” .................................................................................1 2. Management by Fits and Starts, and the Pressure for Preservation .......................................13 3. The War on Vandalism ........................................................................................................25 4. Administration in Turmoil ..................................................................................................51 5. “Nature is the Supreme School-Teacher” .............................................................................75 6. Refuge in Rusticity ............................................................................................................109 7. “A Hodgepodge Where, Instead, There Should Be Uniformity” ........................................137 Appendices .............................................................................................................................161 Notes .....................................................................................................................................175 Bibliography ...........................................................................................................................211 Index ......................................................................................................................................214 Preface The administration of Yellowstone National Park, In addition to reflecting policy, the structures built created in 1872 by an act of Congress, has, from the be- in the park also reflected aesthetic goals or philosophies ginning, been dedicated to protecting the park’s resources important at the time of construction. For example, the and providing opportunities for visitor enjoyment—the buildings at Fort Yellowstone were examples of typical latter, specifically, through interpretation and improve- army architecture, considered appropriate and com- ments. To protect and interpret the park and to provide manding of respect. The museums built in the late 1920s services to the visitors who have chosen to explore its and the early 1930s were of a specific rustic design, a natural splendors, park administrators over the course of style au courant during that period, especially in national time have orchestrated both the construction of a built park architecture across the nation. environment and a constellation of policies that have When the U.S. Congress passed Yellowstone’s allowed park officials to implement and coordinate their Organic Act on March 1, 1872, it withdrew a large area various tasks. This historic resource study and adminis- near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River to be used trative history of the park discusses the ways successive as a public park and stipulated that the land “reserved administrations facilitated the park’s practices of protec- and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale” tion, improvement (public access), and interpretation be used as a “pleasuring-ground for the benefit and by crafting what is, in effect, a cultural landscape—a enjoyment of the people.” The act further stated that built environment with a concomitant set of protective, the park would be under the direction of the secretary interpretive, and public-access-oriented policies. of the interior, who would “make and publish rules and There can be no doubt of a clear relationship be- regulations” for the care and management of the same. tween broad trends in policy and the historic structures These regulations would provide for the “preservation one sees today in Yellowstone. For example, the U.S. from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, Army—and after that, subsequent civilian administra- natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their tions—built, throughout the park, a set of snowshoe retention in their natural condition.”2 They set in motion cabins “at a distance of about 10 miles from the outly- a dual mandate, as well as an enormous experiment in ing outposts [the soldier stations],” a distance one park federal land management that has served as an example official, in 1908, “considered to be a fair day’s travel worldwide. The park’s Organic Act also set the stage for for . men on snowshoes through the mountains.”1 an often-contentious debate on how simultaneously to These cabins were created to serve a specific protection preserve and promote enjoyment of—in short to both goal—that is, to allow soldiers and then rangers to over- protect and use—a national park. see the park more easily from these outposts and thus, The National Park Service Act of 1916 did little better protect park wildlife and other natural phenomena to resolve the matter. Like Yellowstone’s Organic Act, it from poaching and vandalism—and have since become also contained contradictory goals, ordering the newly part of the park’s cultural landscape and historical legacy. created National Park Service to “conserve the scenery Similarly, Yellowstone’s museums and visitor centers—for and the natural and historic objects and the wild life [in example, the rustic museums at Norris, Fishing Bridge, the parks] and to provide for the enjoyment of the same and Madison Junction, or the Mission 66 visitor center in such manner and by such means as will leave them at Canyon—have also served policy goals of providing unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”3 visitors with information and interpretation of the park’s Thus, all government structures built in the park natural environment and history. and physical changes made to the park over the years have Preface v been intended to serve either—or ideally, both—of these history of the park’s administrative facilities. mandated goals: protection of, and the provision of pub- This study begins with the first administration of lic access to the park’s treasures. Balancing the two sides Yellowstone National Park in 1872, and ends around of this mandate has not been without hard questions. 1965, with the nominal end of the so-called Mission 66 For instance, how can a building intended to inform program, a massive effort to revamp national parks with visitors be compatible with preserving the park’s natural adequate facilities designed both to accommodate and conditions, when a building, per se, is not natural? Any to educate masses of Americans eager to explore them. history of the administrative facilities built in the park This document examines the structures built during must address these tensions. The complexities set in mo- the first 90 years of the park’s history, and the policies tion by the language of both Yellowstone’s Organic Act adopted by the various administrations both to protect and the National Park Service Act have been central to the park’s resources and to interpret those same resources the administrative history of the park, and thus, to the for visitor enjoyment. vi Managing the “Matchless Wonders” CHAPTER ONE “To Protect These Matchless Wonders” The Administrations of Nathaniel Langford and Philetus Norris Oh, for wisdom in this council The Park’s First Leaders Of our nation great To protect these matchless wonders The park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Pitt From a ruthless fate!1 Langford, was born on August 9, 1832, in Oneida —Philetus W. Norris, 1878 County, New York. He was educated in a rural county school when he was not busy with chores on his family’s In March 1872, just seven years after the end of farm. After establishing himself as a banker in St. Paul, the Civil War, the United States Congress passed Senate Minnesota, Langford moved west to join an expedition bill 392, the Organic Act that created Yellowstone Na- to the Idaho gold fields, and then settled for a time in tional Park.2 The first part of this act sought to preserve Alder Gulch (Virginia City), Montana Territory. He matchless natural wonders from “settlement, occupancy, served for several years as an internal revenue collector or sale,” as well as “from injury or spoliation,” and to in the territory, and aspired—unsuccessfully—to be its